I think if you have a clear and compelling vision, along with motivated people, story points, scrum, etc. can all work well. If you don't have that, then no process works. So, get the former and don't worry too much about the latter.
Story points are pointless, measure queues
121–130 of 300 posts
Re: Story points are pointless, measure queues
#122Story points aren't time (as OP states). They're relative complexity, and uncertainty (hence the fibbonacci sequence building uncertainty in to larger numbers). And stories should be able to sized as big numbers. I've never been on a team comfortable with more than a 7, at least not since my first agile experience where we all took an agile/scrum training together for a few days. We'd frequently give things like 21 o…
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Re: Story points are pointless, measure queues
#123In this example, example task sizes are assumed to be the same level of effort. That's not necessarily an easy thing to do, and sort of falls into the same problems that pointing out stories.
If your tasks aren't the same level of effort, then one task could take a week, and then next takes an hour. The author seems so sure, I'm almost sure I missed something, but unless you can reconcile how you can have 1 hour tasks and 1 week tasks and consider them the same, well... I'm just confused.
Re: Story points are pointless, measure queues
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software does not exist in a vacuum. You are probably right in thinking that story points should not matter to you, as a developer; but they do matter to external stakeholders. Forecasting and management of expectations is necessary because software often has external real-world dependencies: available funding for a first release, marketing materials, hardware that can't be released without software, trade shows, dev…
> Calibrated burndown of story points is pretty much the only basis on which forecasting and management of expectations can be done in an agile process. Do you mean in an Agile process? Sorry I have a visceral reaction to this, having seen teams try to accomplish large things by breaking them down into story-level tasks and then sum up the estimates, and then watch the slow motion train wreck as gaps emerge, requirem…
I would love to hear your view of handling ambitious changes in a large system.
(In the middle of this scenario. Mix of experienced/talented and low trust environment.)
Re: Story points are pointless, measure queues
#125Are there any companies that have no estimation no pointing etc just figure out what needs to be implemented and implement it type situation?
Startups that have their spec aligned to chaotic good.
Re: Story points are pointless, measure queues
#126Given the size of my scroll bar, I rate reading this article a 13. My PM has decided I shouldn't bother reading it, as the likely value isn't worth the effort, because whenever we take on a 13, it ends up dragging on for like 4 sprints, and preventing a lot of other higher value/lower effort stuff from getting done. Maybe at some point in the future, we'll break the article and have a few people on the team each read…
I feel personally attacked by this comment. This hits so close to home. I think I have some personal reflection to do.
Re: Story points are pointless, measure queues
#127Completely missing the point, which often happens with xor thinking. The beauty of story points is that they rely on human ability to compare things quickly. It's almost instinctive. ex. You're being chased by a rhinoceros through the jungle. You come upon a tree with branches and a boulder with handholds. 2 seconds, which do you choose?
Story points are just a warmup for more elaboration, not an xor decision. This article is making a single-level decision, which completely misses point of using story points. The work-effort really required will be discovered in more elaboration. Story points just give you a live or die measurement, that's it.
Re: Story points are pointless, measure queues
#128The system doesn't matter per se. What matters is that you have one
Re: Story points are pointless, measure queues
#129The problem with the proposed solution is that many teams can't accurately break down tasks small enough. And, even those smaller tasks have variability in how long they take to do. What I've seen is that most teams don't really know how far "stories" break down into their simplest tasks until they actually do the work.
So, that puts us back at square one, for the most part. A story point may not tell you a lot, but tasks in this form often present the same problem.
Re: Story points are pointless, measure queues
#130Good lord. Get to the point.